Drive to any busy part of L.A., and discussions often turn to parking within a matter of minutes. Go to any local government meeting on new housing, and parking tends to come up even faster.
So it may be surprising to hear that in car-centric Los Angeles, thousands of new apartments are now being developed with little to no on-site parking.
Some neighbors worry any influx of renters without dedicated spots of their own will turn the hunt for street parking into a bloodsport. But housing advocates say there are good reasons to build without parking. Eliminating parking requirements brings construction costs down and makes rents more affordable. They say lack of easy parking also encourages residents to use climate-friendly public transportation options.
“We all want to park free — including me,” said Donald Shoup, a UCLA urban planning professor. “The problem with parking requirements is that in some cases the required parking is so expensive that the developer never even thinks about proposing a development.”
Shoup literally wrote the book on this subject. His seminal 2005 text The High Cost of Free Parking explores how parking requirements have raised construction costs and reduced the types of housing that make financial sense to develop on expensive urban land.
That’s because, Shoup said, “a lot of buildings aren’t built” due to parking requirements, “especially small apartment buildings.”
Why parking is no longer a given in new L.A. apartments
Recent changes in state law have allowed developers to ditch on-site parking in many parts of L.A. County — an idea that would have been unthinkable in previous decades.
Laura…
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